


Blessed Are Those Who Hunger

by pollutedstar



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angst, Bisexual Dean Winchester, Episode: s05e14 My Bloody Valentine, Food Issues, Hurt Dean Winchester, Internalized Homophobia, John Winchester's A+ Parenting, M/M, Okay but they do get together at the end this is a lot of serious tags, Parental Bobby Singer, Past Abuse, Past Child Abuse, Past Rape/Non-con, Poverty, ask to tag
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-23
Updated: 2020-07-23
Packaged: 2021-03-05 05:34:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,666
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25459390
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pollutedstar/pseuds/pollutedstar
Summary: Food is complicated for Dean. Although, it’s not food as much as it is hunger. He can appreciate a good hamburger for just being a hamburger, but starvation he has a more complicated relationship with. The feeling should be something that’s easier to condemn than it is, but it’s intermingled with nostalgia and memories of his father and the feeling of doing good by Sam. He loves food, but he misses missing it sometimes.
Relationships: Castiel/Dean Winchester, Dean Winchester & Sam Winchester
Comments: 34
Kudos: 412





	Blessed Are Those Who Hunger

Dean Winchester looks out the cracked motel window, hearing the third member of his family rumble into the parking lot in a black Impala he dreams of one day driving. Sitting behind the steering wheel is his father, holding a quarter bottle of whiskey in one hand. Dean knows his father drives drunk sometimes, but he never complains because John doesn’t do it with Sammy in the car. That’s when it really counts.

He scrambles to open the door before his father reaches it, wanting to be helpful. John just grumbles, pushing Dean to the side as he drops his bag on the empty bed not occupied by Sam.

Dean shuts the door for the man, locking it behind him. He wonders how many times he’ll have to lock it before it will keep his father in.

Sam shifts at the disturbance of the room, but settles again quickly. Dean imagines it’s easy to sleep with a full stomach.

* * *

Food is complicated for Dean. Although, it’s not food as much as it is hunger. He can appreciate a good hamburger for just being a hamburger, but starvation he has a more complicated relationship with. The feeling should be something that’s easier to condemn than it is, but it’s intermingled with nostalgia and memories of his father and the feeling of doing good by Sam. He loves food, but he misses missing it sometimes.

Sam brings him the crime scene photos, and Dean wants to gorge himself.

He understands devouring things you love. Not in such a grotesquely literal sense, but he knows what that ache feels like. Something tugs at his gut because no matter how many times he’s fantasized about taking someone into his arms and making them a part of him, he’s never wondered what it would be like to be consumed so fully before.

In a way, Dean wishes he was wanted as much as Alice was.

* * *

Sam flicks his way through all of the ten channels available on the cheap motel TV, hoping that if he just keeps going some magic eleventh channel will appear to entertain him. He licks his fingers and hums, the grease of the fries still stuck in the creases. He’s so wrapped up in his life as a ten-year-old that he doesn’t notice that Dean has been in the bathroom for fourteen minutes.

The cold tile underneath him is chipping away, and Dean tries to pry one up without thinking. He digs his nails in with all the power he has, which isn’t much these days, and yanks. It doesn’t come loose. The ugly pattern of the floor remains unchanged.

He had wanted to shower. His skin has a layer of fingerprints on it that aren’t his. But he can’t bring himself to look at his body right now. If he strips for the second time that day, he might not stop at simply removing his clothes.

“Dean, hurry up in there!” Sam whines suddenly, knocking on the door. It startles Dean so much he bites down on his lip, hard enough to draw blood. “I have to go to the bathroom.”

A part of himself, the part he lets his father beat and choke, wants to growl that Sam can wait five more goddamn minutes considering what Dean just did for him to have that shitty McDonald’s. That part of him wants to take the extra money that weighs in his pocket that he’s saving for Sam’s dinner and drive off to fuck knows where, buying himself every edible thing he can find between here and Heaven. That part of him wants to tear open the door to the bathroom and scream, not even words, just noises that will finally make someone understand what it feels like to gag around a man twice your age and have nothing come up because there’s nothing to vomit.

That part of him is the only part he can’t seem to starve, no matter how many times he tries.

Dean stands up, opens the door and lets Sam in. He’s spent enough time on the floor today, anyway.

* * *

It doesn’t feel right when Sam brings food to the motel rooms. It’s their money now, all joined together in fake credit cards and hidden in Baby’s compartments and not separated by who won what at pool, and Dean doesn’t have a problem with Sam spending it. But he hates the sight of Sam, now taller than he is and all grown-up, bringing in meals like it’s his job. Like Dean isn’t the one who’s supposed to bring home the bacon, or the cheap gas station frozen meals.

“Their stomachs were _full,”_ Dean tells him, trying to make Sam understand the feeling of seeing those two bodies. “Like, Thanksgiving dinner full. Talk about co-dependent.”

Talk about gluttony. Talk about consumption. Talk about _starvation._

Sam sits down at his laptop and opens up the files, trying to wave Dean off to his standard Valentine’s Day habit of fucking until he can’t remember his first time, but Dean’s stomach churns at the thought. He stands, putting distance between himself and the suggestion, grabbing a beer.

“Guess I’m not feeling it this year,” he sighs. He isn’t really feeling anything this year. Stepping foot into this town has gutted him, but he doesn’t know how to explain that to a boy who grew up with a full stomach.

“So, you’re not into bars of lonely women?” Sam demands, incredulous, which stings in a way that it shouldn’t.

“I guess not.” He takes a longer swig than necessary, wondering how long it would take to literally drown himself with the cheap beer. He twirls the idea in his mind briefly, thinking about the lovers stuffed full of each other. But he stops when he sees Sam’s expression hasn’t changed.

“What?” he asks gruffly.

“It’s when a dog doesn’t eat,” Sam says, “that’s when you know something’s really wrong.”

 _Yeah, well this dog is pretty damn trained in not eating,_ the unkillable voice of his fourteen-year-old self growls in his mind. _This dog is pretty well-trained in general, having to be your guard and your guide and dad’s fucking punching bag all while doing tricks for strange old men and begging for table scraps, so excuse this dog for wanting a break from fucking his problems away._

“Remarkably patronizing concern. Duly noted,” he says out loud.

He doesn’t have to kill the angry part of him if he just starves it of attention.

* * *

“Jesus, boy,” Bobby sighs as Dean stumbles inside, arm around a half-awake Sam. “You’re skin and bones.”

“Dad can’t stop in and talk,” Dean responds, ignoring Bobby’s comment. “Those vamps are really doing a number upstate, he wants it to be quick. Said Sam and I would just slow him down.”

He might be skin and bones, but to his dad he’ll always be dead weight.

Bobby glares out the door at the receding sight of the Impala, and Dean doesn’t know why he always feels safer with Bobby when he’s angry at John. Dean’s never able to work up that kind of wrath on his own for his father.

“Lemme get you two something to eat,” Bobby mutters, locking the door behind them and walking them to the kitchen.

“Sammy already ate, it’s no problem. It’s late, we don’t want to bug you.” Sam yawns, reinforcing Dean’s point. Bobby doesn’t even pause his rifling through the fridge to listen to Dean.

“Then Sam can go ahead and hit the hay while you stay down here.”

“No,” Dean snaps without thinking, the hollowness sitting inside him growing at the thought of being away from his brother.

Sam doesn’t notice the tension. “Dean, it’s fine. I’m exhausted. You can grab something.”

He detaches himself from Dean like it’s easy, like he isn’t scared to let his brother out of his sight, like John won’t beat him if Dean gets hurt. He detaches himself like he can, which guts Dean more than the hunger. 

This is the point, Dean tries to remind himself. He stands between the real world and Sam so Sam can feel safe on his own. Sometimes it just aches to know it works.

Sam disappears up the stairs, and Dean doesn’t take his eyes off him until he has to.

“Something you wanna talk about?” Bobby asks. He always does, and Dean always shakes his head, lowering his eyes and tugging at his ear, trying desperately to give away his tells. He can bluff like a pro, but all he wants is for Bobby to sit him down and demand answers. He wants to be ordered to tell the truth because if he's just following orders, then he can’t be blamed for the aftermath.

It’s a coward’s way out. Bobby never lets him take it.

“Alright,” he sighs when Dean doesn’t respond, setting down a bowl of name brand soup in front of the boy. Dean had mentioned once that he hated not being able to buy real soup, the kind that doesn’t sit on old shelves until the day before it expires, and ever since Bobby has kept some on hand.

Dean has to restrain himself from using his fingers, waiting the agonizing seconds it takes for Bobby to find a spoon for him to use. The dish is scraped clean within three minutes.

Bobby picks up the bowl and fills it again, warming it quickly. “How’s school?”

Dean shrugs, heat rising to his face. He’s been skipping more days than he’d like to admit, more days than his dad or Sammy know. He doesn’t want to tell them why because then he’d have to explain what he’s doing, and then he’d have to explain what made him this way.

Getting on his knees to pay for another night in the motel is one thing. This is something different, something rotten in his gut. Dean knows what want feels like, but he’s never had such a hard time denying himself.

“Yeah, I never much liked it either,” Bobby says, taking his seat next to Dean again. The man is long used to speaking into the silence of the Winchesters. He pushes the bowl to him, but suddenly Dean’s stomach is churning to the point where not even starvation can control his movements anymore.

He puts his head down on the table, wrapping his arms tightly over his ears. Bobby puts a hand on his back, but Dean flinches so intensely that he drops it.

Dean goes up to the room Sam’s sleeping in soon after without touching his soup, feeling guilty about refusing it and guilty about eating it. When he gets up in the middle of the night on the verge of getting sick, he steps out of the room to find Bobby, sleeping against the wall next to their door.

He pads his way back to bed, still full.

* * *

Sam says “Enochian” and Dean feels his hunger flare up. His phone is out of his pocket before he makes the conscious decision.

Enochian written on hearts. His ribs feel too impersonal now.

When Cas appears in front of him, it occurs to Dean that he hasn’t eaten all day. He shoves the thought aside, knowing thinking shit like that leads to bathroom stalls. He shows Cas the hearts, wishing he could recognize the man’s native tongue with a glance like Sam, wishing he’d had a chance to know things that weren’t about the aim of every gun his father owned, wishing he could just pull Cas close and devour him.

At the restaurant that Cas drags them to, full of tacky decorations and overpriced food, Dean watches his every move. The dull hole resting inside him is making him act strange, and he knows it no matter how many times he denies Sam's accusations. He can’t catch himself doing something he’ll regret not regretting.

He wonders if it’s the leftover nausea from seeing the price of it, but suddenly he can’t stand the food in front of him. He can’t even manage a first bite before he unceremoniously drops it back onto his plate, sighing as he returns to surveilling his surroundings.

“Wait a minute,” Sam starts, and Dean can feel his whole body clench as he waits for what he knows Sam will say next. “You’re not hungry?”

 _You were never this goddamn observant when we were kids,_ Dean thinks angrily.

“No,” he says quickly, glancing at Sam and Cas to gauge their reactions. Sam is suspicious. “What? I’m not hungry.”

“Then you’re not gonna finish that?” Cas asks, which is strange enough to distract both of the brothers from Dean’s fast.

Cas lifts the plate and something in Dean’s stomach fills up just a little. If he can’t get Cas to want him, then he can at least give him everything he does want. He almost flags down the waitress for another order so Cas can pick whatever food he’s craving, but then the cherub interrupts them before he can even watch his angel take a bite.

“Meet me in the back,” Cas growls before disappearing and that, at least, is familiar to the hunters. He and Sam rush out, coming up on Cas as he mutters words that are incomprehensible to Dean.

The power in the room is practically tangible. The subtle warmth that radiates from Cas almost lulls Dean into thinking he could really be protected.

A man grabs him from behind and his whole body shuts down from shock. He’s back in the powerless skin of a sixteen-year-old, he knows it, he knows he’s about to be hurt so bad his dad will ask if he hit the other guy back and he’ll have to lie and pretend he didn’t just lay there and take it.

He doesn’t really mean to punch Cupid himself. If anything, he was just punching a man who wouldn’t take no for an answer, and Dean has been waiting a long time to be able to do that.

* * *

When he digs himself out of the ground, Dean’s first thought is that he is starving. Not even his typical dad-isn’t-going-to-be-back-and-Sammy’s-the-priority starving, but a newer, rawer, Hell-is-not-just-a-metaphor-anymore starving. He almost wants to go back in time and knock some sense into his younger self for even thinking he knew what the word “hunger” meant, but he was getting knocked around enough as a kid. Instead, he focuses on finding himself something to eat.

After 40 years of nothing but violence, it’s a relief to return to something as childishly simple as food.

* * *

“Everyone seems to be starving for something.” The slight muffle in his voice from the burger he’s eating only drives his point home. No angel should be hungry, especially not the way Cas is. Dean knows about the purity of fasting. “Sex, attention, drugs, love.”

Dean ignores the way Cas looks at him when he says the last craving on his list. “Well, that explains the puppy lovers that Cupid shot up.”

“Right,” Cas agrees. “The cherub made them crave love, and then Famine came and made them rabid for it.”

Goddammit if Dean couldn’t understand that.

They tie Sam up. Cas eats his 365th burger. Sitting in the car together, waiting to stop an apocalypse, the natural question arises.

“What I don’t understand is… where is your hunger, Dean?”

Dean shrugs noncommittally, trying not to admit that the same question has been tugging at him ever since Cas told them what was really going on. “Hm?”

“Well, slowly but surely, everyone in this town is falling prey to Famine, but so far, you seem unaffected.”

Maybe he’s just used to it, Dean suspects. His tolerance for self-deprivation is unusually high, so maybe he just knows how to let his hunger fester.

Although, with the way Cas’s hair is messed up just right, and the way he’s been watching him ever since he flew his way down to help the boys, and the way Dean just wants to hand the angel a credit card that he can max out on as much red meat as he wants, Dean wonders if he’s really as unaffected as he thinks.

“When I wanna drink, I drink. When I want sex, I go out an get it. Same goes for a sandwich or a fight,” he lies.

“So, you’re saying you’re just well-adjusted.”

“God no,” he grins, wondering if Cas truly understands the falsehood of his statement. “I’m just well-fed.”

* * *

“I’m an angel of the Lord,” Castiel says, and Dean hears his mother’s voice.

“Get the hell out of here. There’s no such thing.”

This disheveled, lying mess of a man in front of him has the audacity to look disappointed at his response. “This is your problem, Dean. You have no faith.”

_Oh, I had faith. I watched that faith burn up in a ceiling fire, I starved that faith so I could make something tangible for my brother, I had that faith fucked out of me by the time I was thirteen. Don’t talk to me about faith when the only person who really watched over me is dead because of this shit._

Dean doesn’t manage to say that, though, because he’s too enthralled by watching the black shadows of wings twice his height spread through the barn. Something inside of him, either the Christian-raised Kansas boy or the sinner, wants to fall to his knees in awe.

He suppresses the urge, keeping eye contact and showing no fear until Castiel, holy and pure, comes so close to him the Dean can feel the heat of his breath as he asks, “What’s the matter? You don’t think you deserve to be saved?”

* * *

Two demons drag him to the middle of the diner, face-to-face with the third horseman himself. Pale and haggard to the point where he can’t support himself, oxygen tubes surrounding him and the look of hunger that Dean knows too well, the man shouldn’t be frightening.

He isn’t.

He is gut-wrenching.

Famine’s touch aches, but not as bad as it should. He makes a hissing sound that might be a laugh when he slides his skeletal hands over Dean’s skin. “That's one deep, dark nothing you got there, Dean. Can't fill it, can you? Not with food or drink. Not even with sex.”

“You’re so full of crap,” he manages to grind out in response.

“Oh, you can smirk and joke and lie to your brother, lie to yourself, but _not to me._ I can see inside you, Dean. I can see how broken you are, how defeated. You can’t win, and you know it, but you just keep fighting. Just keep… going through the motions. You’re not hungry, Dean, because inside you’re already dead.”

* * *

Sam Winchester kills Famine in an all-you-can-eat diner with blood dripping down his cheeks, fresh off the high of exorcising demons with his mind.

Dean’s shocked he doesn’t run the car off the road on the way to Bobby’s just to give them all a break.

* * *

Hunched over the toilet of a shitty bar somewhere deep in the South, Dean hopes his dad doesn’t come looking for him. Ever since Sam left, they’ve been more distant with each other than usual, reaching astounding levels of fucked up that Dean has been avoiding facing in every way he can.

He throws up and he throws up and he throws up and, with his whole empty being, he misses his family.

* * *

Cas brings him out soup, and Dean almost laughs. It’s the name brand kind. He didn’t realize Bobby still had it.

“I’m really not in the mood to eat,” Dean sighs, leaning against his car and refusing to make eye contact with the angel.

“From my understanding, you’ve gone an unhealthy amount of time without any food.”

“I’ve gone longer.”

Cas smiles without humor. “Bobby said you would say that.”

“Why didn’t he just come out here?”

“Because I wanted to.”

Dean watches him, trying to understand what he means. He takes the soup, but doesn’t eat it yet.

“When I was a kid, I didn’t always get what I needed,” Dean says, unsure why he’s spilling his guts to Cas without preamble. “Food-wise, I mean. Dad… he didn’t always leave enough money to feed both of us. Sam was young. He didn’t deserve the bullshit Dad put us through, so I spent it all on him…”

Words fail him, so he wraps his hand around the spoon, fantasizing about taking a bite but not going through with it. He can’t bring himself to.

“Interesting that Sam would be the one to stop Famine, then, considering he caused yours,” Cas says because Cas isn’t stopped by things like shame.

“It wasn’t his fault.”

“It wasn’t yours, either.”

Dean looks up, wondering how long he would crave the approval of a dead man.

“Famine said I wasn’t hungry because I was already dead inside,” he whispers.

“Because you were in Hell?”

“I don’t think so.” He looks back at Cas, locking eyes with a celestial being he is incapable of fully comprehending, wondering if an angel could ever understand a man who’s sold his soul. “I’m numb. I’m fucking numb.” He takes a sip of soup to delay his next words, which barely come out of his lips. “And the only person who doesn’t make me feel like I’m starving myself is you.”

He’s shocked he doesn’t see Cas’s wings considering the intensity of his expression after Dean speaks. Cas takes a step forward, but Dean doesn’t want to fall. He wants to destroy the space between them.

“What do you mean?” Cas demands, his voice leaving a ringing in Dean’s ears despite how quietly he says it.

Finally, Dean voices what he’s been thinking since this case started. “All I know is, I want to eat you alive.”

“I assume you don’t mean that literally.”

Dean smirks. “No, no. I just mean...”

He sets the bowl down on Baby’s roof.

“I want you. I’m famished.”


End file.
